Raynor Winn

Sally Ann Winn publishes as Raynor Winn, borrowing the first half of that name from her mother's maiden name. Born in 1962 in Melton Mowbray and raised on a farm in Staffordshire, she was in her fifties when the couple lost their home in Wales and her husband Timothy, known as Moth, received a diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, a progressive brain disease. With nowhere to live they walked the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path in 2013, camping rough and eating very little. The Salt Path, brought out by Michael Joseph in 2018, is her record of that walk. It won the first RSL Christopher Bland Prize in 2019, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, and reached the screen in 2025 with Gillian Anderson playing Winn and Jason Isaacs playing Moth. In July 2025 The Observer published an investigation disputing how the couple lost the house and questioning the timeline of Moth's illness. Winn called the piece grotesquely unfair and released medical letters in reply. Readers should know the account is contested.